Xbox Series X is just a powerful gaming PC

Xbox Series X is just a powerful gaming PC

More details about Microsoft's Xbox Series X next-generation console have been released, and even more so than the last-generation, the new Xbox will be just like a gaming PC, but with a proprietary and limited operating system on top of it. With hardware you can't upgrade. Hurray?

The Xbox Series X has a custom, eight-core CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture. It runs at 3.8GHz, though that can drop to 3.66GHz if developers leverage the chip's simultaneous multithreading to take advantage of up to 16 threads at any one time. This makes it roughly comparable to an AMD Ryzen 3700X, although its clock speed is noticeably slower by a few hundred megahertz.

Even then that's a hell of a powerful chip, especially considering high-end consoles like the Xbox One X are still running an eight core chip based on AMD's ancient Jaguar technology, and even then only at 1.8GHz. The CPU leap alone in this generation is enormous.

That's being paired up with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, most of which will be reserved for gaming. There will be an AMD RDNA 2 GPU with 52 Compute units, and running at 1.825GHz, making it more powerful than any desktop graphics card AMD has available right now. We're talking around 1080 Ti levels of performance, if the specs line up. That's insane.

There will be an integrated NVMe SSD with a 1TB capacity, offering performance far in excess of any SATA III SSD, and not far behind the fastest of PCIexpress drives today. There will also be an expandable storage option, as well as external options for those who need it.

A 4K Blu-ray drive will be included.

All of this is to enable up a comfortable 4K 60 FPS experience, with some games operating at up to 120 FPS with lower detail settings.